'Star Wars: The Force Awakens': 3 Reasons Its Box-Office Blowout Is Good News

As you probably know, Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened last weekend with a stunning $248 million domestic debut along with a record-high $529m worldwide bow. Since I feel like being positive this morning, and because I still feel a little bad that I accepted an invite to the big premiere so I could take my dad for his 70th birthday and then ended up panning the movie (empathy leads to anxiety, and empathy + anxiety leads to self-imposed guilt), this will focus on the “good news” or “good lessons” aspects of last weekend’s boffo debut. Here are the three most positive aspects of the blockbuster opening weekend.

1) People Went to the Movies:

This one may be a bit obvious, but it bears mentioning nonetheless. With all the talk about the decline of movie-going as an activity of choice for Americans, this one got them out of the house. Of the $247.8 million earned by Star Wars: The Force Awakens over the weekend, 19% shelled out for IMAX or Premium Large Format screens while 47% of the tickets sold were for the 3D version. Some 47% of the audience was 25 years and younger and 42% were women, although both numbers show there is work to be done in terms of second weekend marketing.

It sold nearly 28.8 million tickets between Thursday night and Sunday night, so it’s the biggest weekend in terms of inflation, tickets sold, and any comparable stat. Yes, it was mostly about brand loyalty and generational nostalgia (the film’s quality and positive reception will factor into the next ten days), but people came out in record numbers to take in a movie at a time when we are all worried that nobody does that any more. Point being, if you build it, they will come.

2) Spoiler-Free Marketing:

Between November 28, 2014, and last Wednesday, to my best count, we got five theatrical trailers (three domestic, two prominent international ones), about 30 TV spots, and one or two Instagram tweasers. But within those many pieces of advertising,
Walt Disney and Lucasfilm were able to keep the vast majority of the film under wraps right up until the review embargo broke less than forty-eight hours before the first paid showing. And thanks to critics who really went out of their way to avoid explicit plot spoilers, the film went into nationwide release with very little of its moment-to-moment contents revealed to the public.

And over the last year, there was no discussion about what would or wouldn’t happen in Episode VII, no spoiler-filled Force Awakens clips dropping online, no would-be money shots given away by default in the copious television spots. Heck, there was even some old-school misdirect in terms of certain characters being more prominent than others. They also dealt with Mark Hamill’s very small role not by over-hyping his presence but by almost completely removing him from the marketing. The whole “Where’s Luke?!” gimmick created additional publicity by virtue of not showing something in a win/win scenario.

Yes, it was odd that Disney was so hesitant to show the crowd-pleasing film to film critics, and I hope that particular “Will they/won’t they?” parlor game doesn’t become status quo for big releases, but the end game was a success. J.J. Abrams and friends got The Force Awakens into theaters without giving away the film’s plot, character arcs, and major reveals. That Disney pulled off a $248 million debut weekend without giving away the farm is proof positive that you don’t need to give away the movie one TV spot at a time when you’re dealing with a preordained blockbuster.

Now we can argue to what extent there were any major surprises, especially when you realized that the film was following the original trilogy to a t, but that in itself matters too. The film’s marketing and reception helped reaffirm that there is a difference between hiding shocking reveals versus merely not wanting to show every bit of storytelling before the movie comes out. That J.J. Abrams’s so-called “mystery box” wasn’t terribly full is okay because in a sane movie marketing world we wouldn’t need mystery boxes in the first place. The choice made by the likes of Chris Nolan and Brad Bird to hide the contents of their movies shouldn’t automatically be about protecting secrets, but merely about protecting the experience.

3) Diversity Wins at the Box Office:

If Star Wars: The Force Awakens really does become the biggest movie of all time in America (possibly) and/or worldwide (probably not), we will have a situation where the biggest movie ever stars a young white woman (Daisy Ridley), a young black man (John Boyega), and a really old (my age) Cuban/Guatemalan/French guy (Oscar Isaac) in the core action hero roles. More specifically, the new Star Wars indeed qualifies as a female-centric action fantasy where the core heroic beats and arcs belong to a woman. And despite these unexpected facts, the people still showed up in record numbers this weekend and mostly went home pretty darn satisfied. We got a Star Wars movie starring a woman and a black guy and the world didn't end.

This is basically what I was hoping for back when the new Star Wars was announced and why I got so grouchy when that first cast photo was released in mid-2014. I was desperately hoping that Walt Disney and Lucasfilm would use the guaranteed security of the Star Wars brand to cast the kind of actors who usually wouldn’t get to star in their own blockbuster fantasy franchise. Back in April 2014, I promised that I would "will happily scream to the heavens that I was wrong" if Abrams and company didn't go the conventional route with their casting picks. Well, this is me, screaming to the high heavens that I was wrong and offering an apology in the bargain.

And, if I may be overoptimistic while I am being positive, they seem to be going all the way on this, with Gareth Edwards's Rogue One prequel spin-off starring Felicity Jones and a host of not-quite-white male actors (Donnie Yen, Forest Whitaker, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, etc.), Benicio del Toro and Gugu Mbatha-Raw snagging major (co-starring?) roles in Rian Johnson’s Episode VIII, and Disney taking “secret meetings” with female filmmakers to potentially crack the glass ceiling in terms of women writing and directing big-budget tent poles. If Disney really does use the Star Wars franchise and its guaranteed bankability as a laboratory of sorts for rebutting conventional wisdom about who can make what movies and who can star in what movies, then that will be its greatest and most important legacy.

It’s not that I optimistically believe that Hollywood will look at the results and stop casting movies like Gods of Egypt with 99% white male actors overnight. But the proverbial powers that be can no longer look at The Force Awakens and franchises like The Fast and the Furious and argue that gender and racial diversity can be a hindrance here and abroad. They can no longer claim that having ethnically correct casts in ethnically-specific films is akin to box office poison, or that female-fronted blockbusters can’t compete with the male-centric variety, or that mega movies starring people who aren’t white constitute a financial risk even if the property is already golden.

They can no longer proclaim "I don't see a lot of money here."

I won’t go so far as to say that the unconventional nature of the Force Awakens cast was a positive factor in the film’s opening weekend (you certainly can), but I will say that it clearly didn’t cause any harm whatsoever. And if the film has legs beyond the hardcore fans, it will be from millions of moviegoers flocking to theaters to see a mega-budget fantasy tent pole where the heroes look like them for once. In that sense, no matter my issues with the film's plotting, no matter my issues with the structure that turns the film into a "Greatest Hits of the Original Trilogy" jukebox, no matter my misgivings about a pre-sold franchise reboot becoming one of the biggest movies of all time purely on the strength of brand awareness, Star Wars: The Force Awakens qualifies as a genuine force for good in the galaxy.

I've studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an emphasis in box office analysis, for 28 years. I have extensively written about all of said subjects for the last ten years. My outlets for film criticism, box office commentary, and film-skewing ...